Cross Country racing

I took my gaggle of cross country runners to the Singapore International Champs this week. It was held at the American School of Singapore which was a bit too urban for a cross country race. Nevertheless heaps of kids from the other schools competed. The race was dominated by the kids from the American School. The school has about 3,000 students and a very modern and bling campus. Wouldn't mind having a full athletics track, Olympic size pool and artificial turf at our school. We didn't have many kids running. Our school has about 550 students, which is tiny compared to the seven big schools here with between 2000 and 3500 students.

Our Under 14 girls team with their 3rd place medals (plus random Curtis sneaking into the pic)

A weekend workshop in Bangkok

A few week ago we headed to Bangkok for a weekend of curriculum training for the International Baccalaureate. Both Rachel and I are now teaching a middle years class ( Grade 6 - 10) so spent three days in a workshop learning about Humanities / Social Studies, assessments and or sorts of other dull teaching material. This is about as close as we will ever get to a business trip so we made the most of it.

Our workshop classroom at the New International School of Thailand, boring.

We stayed in a great hotel in central Bangkok in the district of Sukhumvit, about a 10 min walk from the school where the course was run. The hotel was amazing value compared to the some of the hotels that was stayed in whilst in Europe.

Our hotel suite, huge lounge, kitchen and the king size bedroom.

We enjoyed the chance to network with some other teachers from around Asia. We met teachers who work in Beijing at a rather prestigious international school, the Western Academy of Beijing. http://www.wab.edu/ We also befriended people from Laos, Thailand and Indonesia. The growth of international schools in Asia is exponential at the moment especially in India and China with more multinational companies setting up in those parts of the world.

Lumpini market and food courts, the girls are out shopping.

We didn't get a huge chance to tour the city but did escape on Saturday night to the night markets in Lumpini. On the same afternoon, 30,000 red shirt anti government protestors where heading into central Bangkok a year after the riots when the airport was closed for week. We managed to get across town on the subway system which is brand new and very efficient. From what we heard Bangkok is not quite the wild west of Asia that it used to be. Still plently of interesting stuff that contrast against sterile Singapore. Think we might head back for a long weekend soon to do some shopping and check out the temples and attractions.